The proposed project extends the applicants' program of research to develop theories and empirical findings on the cultural construction of disability experiences. Improved medical care, knowledge of impairment physiology, and demographic changes has led to many more disabled people surviving into old age. Far less is known about the cultural frameworks patterning psychosocial experiences of lifelong disability, or of new impairments superimposed on prior disability. Data on these dimensions will contribute to our understandings of how to enhance well-being in the disabled. For a model of aging with disabilities, poliomyelitus was selected since its natural course provides three common contrasting conditions of living with disability: stable lifelong, new progressive, and no residual impairments. The specific aims are to answer several empirical questions, and to use those findings to develop theories of the cultural construction of disability. What are individual's interpretations of and ways for expressing cultural values and beliefs about disability? What do they find distressing? How do the interpretations by people with stable impairments compare to those whose stable impairments unexpectedly convert to a progressive condition? How do the interpretations and senses of distress relate to impairments, age, sex, and well-being? The proposed 42 month project is designed to address these aims by examining subjects assigned to three major contrasts in functional conditions (new impairments with residual impairments, stable residual impairments, no residual impairments), split by age. It will select 216 polio survivors, 36 subjects per cell in the Philadelphia and Washington, DC regions. Extensive interviews will be conducted using in-depth methods and standardized measures. The project is noteworthy for combining the social gerontological and biosocial rehabilitation perspectives and resources of each applicant organization to address new functional loss in late life, and assures sufficient subjects. The substantive data on the personal meanings and the perceived distress will be valuable for rehabilitation and gerontology, and assist clinicians, program planners, disabled persons and their families. Data will be relevant to the Continuity Theory of well-being, sociocultural theories of disability, and will complement biomedical work on physical impairment and chronic disease.